Pucking Ever After(Jacksonville Rays, #2.5)

by Emily Rath

“Jake tells me to be patient, and I am being patient, Mars. I’ll keep waiting. I’ll keep pretending it’s enough because I know you’re not ready and maybe you never will be. But I’m gonna keep waiting, Mars. And maybe someday you’ll look at me the way you look at Rachel, and then I’ll know I don’t have to wait anymore. Because we could be so good together, Mars.”

“You sound like a Viking king when you speak Spanish,” says Caleb,

Rachel is the slow beating of my heart, essential to living. Jake is the breath of fresh air in my lungs. But Caleb? He’s become my second set of ribs. He’s our protector, our center. He keeps us safe. He keeps us whole.

The shirt, the coffee, the Finnish—my metaphor is boxing me out. Fuck him.

“To know you is to want you, Caleb.”

“I can’t breathe for wanting you. I have no pride left. No clever words. Nothing. Please…just end my fucking agony and tell me there’s something left. Tell me there’s a part of you I can have that they don’t already claim, something that can be only mine.”

“Are you in love with me, Mars?” He closes his eyes and lets out a breath. “So much it hurts.”

blink, dumbfounded. Me. He learned to dirty talk from listening to me. Well, the student has surpassed the master. A-fucking-plus.

“Babe, you owe me a hundred bucks. I told you that would work. I’m an evil fucking genius.”

“You’re not my metaphor anymore.”

He’s quiet for a moment before giving me an answer that makes my chest squeeze tight. “I never was.”